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Been very busy researching, studying rulesets and painting my new Musket and Tomahawk force.

Getting ready for the campaign to kick off in the club and start smashing the Americans and Brits!!

Purchased the French Wilderness Force from Gripping Beast, 20 French Line infantry and an officer from Frontrank Figurines, very impressed with the castings and details are excellent from both companies. Heres a few ipad shots of whats completed so far.

Recently you may have noticed a few changes around here, well I’ll get to that in another post later in the month but yes the website has been entirely revamped and the shop has been completely made over to stock lots more such as rulesets, miniatures and terrain for Medieval, Dark Age, and Wild West gaming. A small round of applause to the huge DBL web team… oh no wait, there isn’t one, just me! Go me!

Lion Rampant £11.99

But right now, I feel we need an entire blog post to talk about LION RAMPANT. A brand new medieval skirmish game from Osprey Publishing. I’m sure you must be familiar with Osprey, every historical gamer has at least a hundred of their reference books piled around the house, and another hundred in the footwell of the car. Well possibly rather naively, I had no idea they produced wargames rules…

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Happy New Year to you all, I hope you received some nice new pressies…I got loads more lead.

To keep myself motivated I have set myself a target of at least 3 completed models a week. I know it does not sound a lot, especially when I look at some people’s blogs, they have set targets of 800 plus for the year!! I am currently working on my two SAGA forces, so on the workbench this week is..

You clever people will have noticed that’s more than 3 there for the week. What I have found is that since I got my painting mojo back I find it easier to stay interested if I have a variety of models on the go at once. I am loving the new Mutatwwi’a warband, never painted a camel and the chance to use bright sunny colours and light washes is making a real change from Anglo Dane stuff, and the models are as usual, high quality casted.

Hope you all had a great Xmas, I managed to finish 6 Flemish Mercs, planned 8 and 2 Norman Levies, planned 3. So 4 down on target, but Xmas parties and all lol. Got my new Crescent & Cross Mutatawwia warband yesterday, undercoat on 3 of them today as pic below. Pics from my iPad again so not brilliant but ok for WIP’s. Have a great New Year and a lead full 2015.

So this Sunday I played my first match towards the club league. My Anglo Dane v Reg’s Byzantium’s, both 6 point forces all standard apart from my 8 x Flemish Mercs.

I picked the Battle of the Ford scenario and deployed all my forces on deployment, Reg deployed most of his forces defended the left hand bridge (that was his mistake lol). The game was set to last 7 turns, the side with most forces on the opposite side of the river is the winner. My plan worked perfectly, by turn 4 I had all my Levies and 12 Hearthguard across the right hand bridge…un-opposed, Reg was busy on the left hand bridge with the Flemish. Before he knew what was going on I have both bridges either blocked or figures in his path, not much killing going on, but still a tactical game. Reg concended on the start of turn 6. Two points for me.

Get over guys (RH Bridge)

Anglo Danes over RH Bridge

Dont let them pass!

Hold fast (LH Bridge)

Warriors just protecting

I cant see a way through

Levies took a bashing but Hearthguard stood firm

The second game consisted of a three-way battle, with me defending my Homeland in three buildings with 4 points of Anglo Dane V 6 point Crusade (Reg) V 6 point Welsh (Ross). It sounded fairly simple, keep one figure in one building after 7 turns to be the winner. I was fairly confident until the start of turn 4 when Ross brought the full weight of the Welsh to bear on the first building with 12 Hearthguard, needless to say I did not last long. Reg then took it upon himself to use the full force of his Crusader battleboard on the Flemish in the left hand building, he had built up his skills and had access to the best abilities. The new Crescent and Cross rules/boards need you to build your abilities, so for the first few turns little action was coming from Reg, but then OMG, in two surges he had cleared the 2nd building.
I was struggling now at the start of turn six, I then lost my Warlord to Ross which left me with one die!! Ross moved up to the last building with 12 Hearthguard and a side by side soon cleared out 4 Hearthguard. At that point I was spent, Ross took one building, Reg took the other. Rather than play on they went for victory points, Ross won by 3. Great game this, my first SAGA MP game. I did fairly well and held out a force 3 times mine for 6 rounds. Well done Ross and Reg.

I’ve acquired a deal of second-hand Late Romans from my friend Eddy, he of the massive lead pile, and in between commission painting I just had to paint the first unit up as a colour test. I’ve been interested in collecting this type of force ever since learning about them in high school (which is about thirteen years ago at this point – around the same time I began wargaming). There’s just something glorious about the brave but futile Roman attempts to withstand the barbarian menace, and I’m a sucker for lost causes. On to the models then!

A mix of Musketeer and Gripping Beast miniatures.

I mixed models from two manufacturers for this first unit; the rest of the army will probably be Gripping Beast uniquely. The sculpting on these few Musketeer models I received is slightly better, but overall they’re both excellent and can be readily mixed. I…

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Hi guys, I got round to having a crack at a test figure for my new SAGA Norman force. Fairly simple really, painted lots of Rohan horses so fairly straight forward. Horse markings are just ok I think, maybe not wash them so much next time. Comments appreciated, thanks.